Who are the Blackhawks?

The Blackhawks are comic book heroes. Their career has spanned more than fifty years, making them some of the longest lived characters in the comic book universe. One of the first teams in comics, they laid the ground work for later, better known teams, like the X-Men. The Blackhawks began their career in World War II fighting the Axis powers. After the war they found new foes, first in the Communist threat and later in countless super-powered criminals.

Periodically, a one page origin story was printed in the comic book. The text was basically the same, though it was edited to reflect the political climate of the time. Thus, in the 1950's it portrayed the Soviets as nearly as evil as the Nazis, whereas they had been valued allies during World War II. Thanks to Roger Hill, an example of one of these pages can be seen by going to Issue No. 50.

To insure the continued availability of the character biographies that were located here, I am transferring them to the DC Comics Database. I am confident that it will be around long after I'm gone. So click on the link below to go to the listing for the Blackhawk Squadron. When you get there, click on "Show" former members under "Affiliations" and look for the "Earth-One" Blackhawks.

"Not too many folks know it, but most of the Blackhawks' full names were revealed (albeit one time only, in most cases) in the course of the original Quality / DC run. This assumes, of course, that the Quality and early DC Blackhawks had the same names, which we'll take as given in the absence of other evidence. Here's what I've got:

"Since each of these names (except for Blackhawk's, which was cited in two different issues) was only revealed in a single story, it's possible that Stan's and Andre's names were given in a story I haven't read yet."

[Editor's note: Of course, none of these names are the same as the names created by Howard Chaykin when he revised the characters for his version of Blackhawk. Click here for the Chaykin Who's Who.]